Inside Apple's iPhone 5: Product Teardown

Pages

Easy-Open iPhone

Apple's most serviceable iPhone yet, the iPhone 5 comes apart with the removal of just two tiny screws. Once loosened, service techs can easily lift the glass by grabbing it with a suction cup. The sixth-generation iPhone owes its thinner profile in part to a two-layer display (instead of three). In the iPhone 5, the LCD and touch layers are combined into a single layer over which sits the durable glass. A small ribbon cable at the head of the panel attaches it to the iPhone's main board.

According to an iPhone 4/5 component-price comparison published in September by iSuppli, the new 4-inch Retina panel with in-cell touch costs $44 to manufacture, about $7 more than the 3.5-inch panel in the iPhone 4S.